The best of 2020

What to say about 2020 that hasn’t been written about 1000 times before. What a time to be alive. I’ve composed what I would say in the intro to this post on numerous late night covid compliant dog walks, but as always, once I sit at my desk, the literate, artful prose I had planned has vanished. So here goes…

As a business owner I started the year feeling hopeful – not only did I have a diary full of bookings I was so incredibly excited to be a part of, a burning fire to try and push my business forwards after a purposefully quieter 2019 and Edwin rocketing into our world, and a list of proper adulting life goals like buying a bigger car with four doors and having some walls knocked down in our house. Enter covid – the destroyer of dreams.

I’ve heard from so many couples how their wedding plans have been turned upside down. What that means for their life plans too. The tears shed, the tough decisions that have had to be made. Wedding after wedding postponed.

And yet, in amongst it all, it made perfect sense for some people to push ahead. Enter the micro wedding – ducking and diving the government legislation, sometimes going ahead less than 24 hours before tier changes or new limitations, or miraculously before travel corridors closed. Each one feels like a singular moment in time – some kind of kismet that we could all come together and celebrate some how. In amongst all of this – love was not cancelled – we just found new ways to celebrate.

Each celebration was wonderful, happy, fun. I have adored working every single wedding this year and I hope it shows in the collection of images below. I was lucky enough to shoot 18 weddings in 2020; it would have been more were in not for some last minute bad tier 4 juju in December.

And yet here we are in January 2021, I think we hoped for a very different picture and whilst there is hope on the horizon, I think we still feel deep in the mire. The daily news makes our hearts heavy, the urge to throw our arms around friends still strong. When it’s finally over it’s going to be one hell of a party.

If you’re thinking of ploughing ahead with a smaller wedding later this year, I have some great advice for you here.

Meanwhile, it’s been tough for the wedding industry. Alongside other areas like events, travel and theatre – we’ve been left on the sidelines by the government. Many people, including myself, have been excluded from government support and we urgently need a roadmap for reopening of the sector. By the end of March, which is when this current lockdown is expected to last until, we will have been closed entirely for 7 months out of 12, and heavily restricted the rest of the time. What about Weddings have been doing a wonderful job at advocating for both couples and suppliers, and are well worth a follow.

If you’ve read this far then thank you, and here’s to a better future.

Some of these photos were taken in early 2020, before the Pandemic.